Web Development Articles

Website Optimization - A SEO Specialist Reveals All
 by: Robert Fuess

Website optimization is the first step in promoting your website. Those with foresight and deeper pockets will have a SEO-savvy webmaster (such as myself) build the website that is optimized from the start. Otherwise, a website may need a SEO-facelift later to help it be digestible to the search engines - and to make it obvious to the search engines that the keywords you are trying to be found under are truly relevant to your website. Like any specialty, performing website optimization involves skills, special tools, and a willingness to keep up with current changes in the market.

Unfortunately, hiring an SEO expert can be quite expensive. For those who want to do it themselves, here are the steps.

BOOKMARK THESE TOOLS! YOU WILL need them!

The first step in website optimization is to make sure you have well-formatted HTML. I would encourage you to use the following tool to check this: http://validator.w3.org/ Do your best to get your website as close to conformance as possible.

If you use CSS, then use a CSS validator at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html There is rarely an excuse for not having it validate here.

Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops.

You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so ? congratulations ? you’re well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then ? the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website..

1. You’re Fishing For Visitors ? You’ll Need This To Hook Them.

Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you’ve forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don’t have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favourites. It is best to have the button located on the homepage but an even better option is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of your website for safe-keeping. Look to the left of this article and you will see the bookmarking button we use ? click on it to see how it adds this specific page to your favourites ? nifty eh?

Unimaginable Power Of The Content- Most Sacred Secretes Of Effective Copywriting Revealed
 by: Peter Finers

Few of the web site owners do not understand the importance of well-written and well-optimized content. The demand on experienced and skilled copywriter, whether he specializes in the web site copywriting, offline or internet copywriting, is constantly rising. However, how could one define experienced and highly- skilled copywriter? What skills and experience should he possess to design and compose effective copywriting content?!

Undoubtedly he should know SEO copywriting process, none of the web site content can not be written without it. Copywriter should understand how to get high rankings on your web site, how to perform keywords search process and organize and optimize your web site. Certainly it might be advisable to see some of the web sites designed by your potential copywriter. One should evaluate them thoroughly in order to understand the ability and aptitude of your copywriter. These are just of the few requirements that should be met by experienced and highly-skilled copywriter. Certainly, the format of this article does not allow enlisting all of them. Each company that hires copywriters sets special standards and requirements for its individual copywriting (www.killer-content.com/copy_writing.php) process.

With literally hundreds of web hosting providers competing for your business, it may be confusing to find the one that’s right for your web site. A few key considerations can help you narrow down your choices to the most affordable and best options to meet your personal, professional or business web page needs.

What kind of web site are you planning?

Your personal web page has far different needs than your professional web page and that needs a different style of hosting than an eCommerce storefront. Most web hosting companies offer plans sized to fit any size of style of web site. Which plan you choose depends on what you intend to do on your web site.

Personal Web Page Hosting

There are dozens of free servers that will host your personal web pages for free, and many of them offer most of the perks that you get with a paid web hosting account. If you want a personal web page without the ads, though, you can find web page hosting for as little as $4.95 a month with no advertising, and with support for things like PHP and mySQL. Many affordable web hosting packages will even register a domain name for you for free.

Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing business on the Internet, should think seriously about their position! If you are one of them, chances are there, that you have to pay dearly for your indecision as you might lose significant market share to your more proactive competitors in a very short period of time.

Apart from the fact that e-commerce is growing at the rate of more than 25 percent a year, the use of online features can bring efficiency to virtually every aspect of business process, be it supply chain management or customer support management.

But, how can you build an e-commerce business and take advantages of all these great possibilities? After all, you are pretty sure that anything to do with new technology is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.

Believe it or not, this is just a misconception that most business owners have about the Internet technology. The truth is ? in order to run a business online and reap profits, like any new effort, you need to do a little homework, have patience and determination, and get going.

Take the following steps seriously and in no time you will be able to embrace fascinating world of online business.

So your web site’s online and you’ve got high rankings in the search engines attracting lots of visitors. But the statistics tell you most of them are leaving after viewing just one page, what’s gone wrong?

One possible cause could be a slow download speed of your web site’s homepage or the web site as a whole. There is nothing worse than having to wait for a web site to load up. Studies indicate that the majority of visitors will only wait 3 - 5 seconds for a homepage to load up before clicking elsewhere. If your homepage doesn’t load up in this time (from a standard internet connection) you are running the risk of losing lots of visitors before they’ve even read the content of the homepage.

They Won’t Hang Around!

You should always assume that most visitors will be connecting to the Internet using standard equipment - not super-charged fast connections. The main culprits of slow download times for a homepage are images. Just remember - every part of every web page you view has to travel down the phone line and onto your screen - the larger the item the longer this will take to happen. It is for this reason that you will sometimes notice the text on a web page loads up on your screen before the images. This is because of the simple reason that images are larger in file size than text and therefore take longer to come down the phone line.

I Used to Be A Hosting Refugee
 by: Will Hanke

Back in 1997 when I first started out doing web design, learning HTML, building pro-bono websites for non-profits, I utilized the cheapest hosting I could find. In most cases, I used free hosting, and well, I got what I paid for.

Soon thereafter I started my business, also on a free hosting server. The server was up and down, never had much traffic, and no wonder - it was down when the search engines came around! So, my site never got indexed. No indexing means no traffic. Bummer.

In 1999, my web design business was growing nicely, and it finally came to a point where I needed to provide my clients quality hosting. While I’m somewhat tolerant of free hosting going up and down, my clients were not. Downtime equated to lost sales, and that was unacceptable. They were becoming hosting refugees. So I started my own hosting company, and committed myself to providing the best service they deserved.

Soon after starting my hosting division, new hosting clients started showing up, all with generally the same problem. They were looking for a quality host that wasn’t going to let them down. They were hosting refugees. So, I provided them the best hosting service on the Net.

Company Website Maintenance
 by: John Argy

As the internet grows in its popularity and your company in its reach, merging both successes become fruitful when the presence on the internet is firmly established. Your company’s web site could have been launched as a first time experiment or as a fully blown e-commerce venture, both cases of presence need to be sustained over a long period of time. The need for your company web site maintenance arises, for reasons of sustaining it in the face of so many risks it faces on the internet. Company web site maintenance is normally undertaken by it’s own IT or EDP division or by an external agency specializing in this area of information technology.

The risks could arise from so many unethical and untoward practices on the internet propagated by destructive hackers or intellectual property thieves. Company web site maintenance is a relatively new concept and practice covering the following areas:

Content Updates:

This article may come as a surprise to you.

Especially since it is written by a web designer. Let me explain……

Rescue Your Web Site from Boring Words and Poor Design.

The difference between a successful website design and a site that brings in zero or very little business is not how nice the graphics are, not the colors you choose. It’s not the flashy animation, and it’s not your precious company logo.

I’m not saying to remove these elements. Some of them are important. But they’re mostly ego-driven. They are “me” messages, and have absolutely nothing to do with what you want your visitor to do.

And what is that you ask? The answer is of course. You want your visitors to buy something.

People who are considering doing business with you are only interested in one thing; “What’s In It For Me?”

One of the first steps toward a successful website is writing copy that tells the reader what’s in it for him, in a style that is easy to read.

Make More Cash

Study any website that makes money and I promise you’ll see the following copy elements in place:

Using XSite Pro To Produce Websites On The Fly!
 by: Ian Simpson

The New website building software called Xsite Pro allows you to create websites easily and without having to use html. The software developer, Paul Smithson hasn’t re-invented the wheel, he has simply improved on it! Xsite Pro was developed to allow anyone to create either a complex website or a simple niche website quickly and easily.

There were some teething problems and a few bugs that needed to be fixed when this software was launched but those have been resigned to the past as the software evolved to its present form.

Paul Smithson invented Xsite Pro to fill a gap in the market. He wanted a website building program that not only built websites but also one that incorporated stand alone programs such as ftp, adsense and links pages. There is no doubt that Paul has achieved his initial goal and continues to work to make it better still.